Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield

Michael A Sutton, University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

(1919 ) British physicist who pioneered computed axial tomography (CAT) scanning , using computer analysis of X-ray data to produce three-dimensional body images.

Introductory article

Godfrey Hounseld was born near Newark, in Nottinghamshire. At an early age he became fascinated by the machinery on the farm to which his father, Thomas Hounseld (a former manufacturer), had recently retired. While studying physics and chemistry at the local grammar school, Godfrey carried out many ambitious (and dangerous) experiments at home, and built himself a radio receiver. In 1939 he joined the Royal Air Force, and shortly afterwards was appointed a radar mechanic instructor at the RAF College, Cranwell, where he designed and built large-screen oscilloscopes and other new instruments for teaching purposes. After World War II he gained a diploma from Faraday House Engineering College, London, before joining the research sta of Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI) in 1951, where he worked on radar and guided weapons. From 1958, Hounseld led the team that built the rst British solid-state electronic computer, the EMI-DEC 1100, in the process making important innovations in the construction of transistors. He also carried out pioneering work on the use of thin lm devices for high capacity information storage. During this period he acquired an interest in the use of computers for pattern recognition, and in 1967 he began working on computer methods for the analysis of information produced by X-ray examination of the human body. In the USA, Allan Cormack had made some progress in this direction, but it was Hounseld who, in 1972, produced the rst computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanner. This instrument rotates a beam of X-rays around the patient, while an array of detectors measures

the attenuation of the transmitted X-rays. A computer then analyses the resulting pattern, using the data to construct cross-sectional images of the relevant organs, which can be viewed on a computer screen. It is thus possible to build up accurate three-dimensional images of internal body parts by collating a sequence of twodimensional scans a technique that proved particularly valuable for investigating the brain. A series of improvements to the original prototype enabled Hounseld to increase the precision of the instrument, while reducing the amount of radiation to which the patient was exposed, and by 1975 whole-body scanners were commercially available. Thereafter, Hounseld continued to work on this and other body scanning techniques, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In 1979, he and Cormack shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of CAT scanning, and in 1981 Hounseld was knighted.

Further Reading
Hounseld GN and Brown PH (1973) Computerised transverse axial scanning (tomography). British Journal of Radiography 46: 1086. McMurray EJ (ed.) (1995) Notable 20th Century Scientists, vol. 2, pp. 957958. New York: Gale Research. News (1979) Physics Today 32(12): 1720. Nobel e-museum (2000) The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1979. The Nobel Foundation. [http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/ 1979] [Website of the Nobel Foundation.]

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE SCIENCES / & 2001 Nature Publishing Group / www.els.net